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The following is a review of: "A Scientific Mystery, a Massive Coverup, and the Dark Legacy of Robert Gallo" by John Crewsdon, Little, Brown & Co. Twelve years ago, Robert Gallo was chief of the laboratory for tumor-cell biology at the National Cancer Institute and one of the world's most celebrated scientists. In 1984 Margaret Heckler, secretary of health and human services, had hailed Gallo as the discoverer of the virus that causes AIDS and the inventor of the first test for the virus. Gallo had received virtually every major prize for medical research except the Nobel. Samuel Broder, director ...

Who’s even more powerful than the king? The person who gets to pick the king. And as of this morning that person is, quite possibly, FBI Director James Comey. Today’s Morning Joe reported breaking news from the New York Times: Attorney General Loretta Lynch has decided that she will accept the recommendation of the FBI regarding its investigation of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails. If Comey recommends against an indictment of Hillary, that would lift a huge cloud that has been dragging her candidacy down. It would put Hillary in a very strong position to become the next president. But should Comey...

Eight Senate Republicans joined with 44 Democrats on a Republican-proposed compromise that would deny people on two different federal watch lists the ability to buy weapons unless they could successfully appeal that decision. Several other Republican senators showed some willingness to accept new restrictions on gun purchases if they could be structured in an acceptable way. A bipartisan companion measure also was introduced in the House.

Ted Cruz and John Kasich have a message for Donald J. Trump: They don’t care if they are not invited to speak at his convention. As Mr. Trump tries to plan a convention that will run as smoothly as possible, he said in an interview with The New York Times last week that he would not invite either Mr. Cruz or Mr. Kasich, both former rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, to speak at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland unless they endorsed him. That is fine, both said on Monday. A spokeswoman for Mr. Cruz, Catherine Frazier, said the...

But it is the flow of people into the European Union that has had the greatest geopolitical impact, and helped to precipitate the British vote. Stabilizing Syria and permanently curbing the refugee flow could be one of the critical factors in determining whether Europe can steady itself politically. Before the refugee crisis, the European Union was already an unwieldy and unfinished entity. Its contradictions and imperfections were exacerbated by the economic crisis. Yet it was the onset of more than a million refugees marching through Greece and the Balkans toward Germany that may ultimately prove to be the most destabilizing...

House Democrats ended their 25-hour sit-in over gun control legislation on Thursday, a protest Speaker Paul D. Ryan labeled a high-profile stunt that undermined the basic institutions of government. Mr. Ryan said he was “not going to allow stunts like this to stop us from carrying out the people’s business.” He added, “This is about a publicity stunt and now a fund-raising scheme.” But on legislative business, it was Mr. Ryan who prevailed. He personally reclaimed control of the House, pounding his gavel and muscling through a major appropriations bill that included funding for combating the Zika virus, without debate.

In the ongoing battle over women’s reproductive health, high-profile GOP politicians haven’t exactly praised Planned Parenthood. However, George W. Bush’s daughter, Barbara, spoke in favor of the organization. In a conversation with Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards for the New York Times, Bush said that part of the mission of her organization, Global Health Corps, is counting on millennials looking to effect change in the health industry. “So many young people want to work on social change. They want to do good,” she said. “Global Health started because this great talent pipeline was not moving into health care. It’s hard...

BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH damn that Catherine Zeta Jones

May 11, 2016 Michael Covel An insidious new fantasy is blooming in Washington, D.C, academia and the media… Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders dreams about it in between bong hits. It’s lovingly endorsed by “off the wall” left-wing economist Paul Krugman. And the ultra-progressive Huffington Post calls it “the idea that could revolutionize the 21st century.” The hype surrounding this “revolutionary” idea will soon be an everyday talking point. And if you’re a hard-working citizen who takes care of your own responsibilities, you should pay extra close attention… Because you’re about to get fleeced and forced to enjoy it… Utopian...

Omar Mateen pledged allegiance to ISIS while he opened fire on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando last weekend, proving his attack was borne out of radical Islam. Yet, if you ask some bystanders in Brooklyn, they’ll tell you the gunman’s rampage had nothing to do with religion. That’s what filmmaker Ami Horowitz found when he asked New Yorkers who was to blame for Sunday’s stark death toll. “I don’t think it had much to do with Islam, to be honest,” said one Brooklynite. “I don’t think it was a terrorist,” said another. Republicans and guns played a much larger role in...

Donald Trump’s Use of ‘Pocahontas’ Has Native Americans Worried Alan Rappeport Donald J. Trump is heading west this weekend for rallies in Las Vegas and Phoenix and a fund-raiser at Barry M. Goldwater’s old estate, known as Be-nun-i-kin, Navajo for “house on top of the hill.” But it is the prospect of Mr. Trump’s gathering with members of the Navajo Nation that is creating the most intrigue around the trip of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. His repeated use of the name “Pocahontas” to deride Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, has stirred a debate among Native Americans about how they...

After Orlando and San Bernardino and Paris, there is new urgency to understand the signs that can precede acts of terrorism. And with the Islamic State’s prolific use of social media, terrorism experts and government agencies continually search for clues in posts and Twitter messages that appear to promote the militants’ cause. A physicist may not seem like an obvious person to study such activity. But for months, Neil Johnson, a physicist at the University of Miami, led a team that created a mathematical model to sift order from the chaotic pro-terrorism online universe. In a study published Thursday in...

As families began planning funerals for the victims of Sunday’s rampage at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla., gay Americans mourned a loss that extended beyond the lives cut short. Omar Mateen shattered the tenuous, hard-fought sense of personal safety that many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans have begun to feel as the movement for equality has made significant gains in recent years. His bullets and the blood he left behind that early morning were a reminder that in many corners of the country, gay and transgender people are still regarded as sinners and second-class citizens who should be...

A New York Times editorial advocates for a new law allowing a secret court to take away citizens' right to own a gun at the discretion of the federal government.Citing the Orlando terror attack that left 50 dead including the shooter and 53 wounded at a gay nightclub, the piece advocates for a "no-buy" list similar to "no-fly" lists. Under the law, suspected terrorists would not be able to buy a gun. In an attempt to ensure the integrity of the lists and preserve due process, the author proposes people only be added to this no-buy list after a secret...

In his second speech on Sunday morning's terrorist massacre in Orlando, Florida, President Barack Obama said  on Monday that "the shooter was inspired by various extremist information that was disseminated over the Internet," that "we see no clear evidence that he was directed externally," and that "this is certainly an example of the kind of homegrown extremism that all of us have been so concerned about for a very long time." The press, led as usual by the Associated Press, is certainly cooperating with those characterizations. Presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has clearly made up her mind that...

What happens when a National Public Radio host interviews a New York Times reporter on the subject of Venezuela’s economic collapse? You get a perfect storm of cluelessness. The host is Terry Gross, the guest is New York Times reporter Nicholas Casey, and the program is Fresh Air. Gross asks Casey about the utter disaster that Venezuela has become. Casey understands the depth to which Venezuela has fallen–he lives in Caracas!–but he can’t bring himself to offer an honest diagnosis.

Link only due to copyright issues: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/did-bernie-sanders-just-hand-trump-the-election

The death certificate for the father of the controversial Mexican judge confirms that Curiel’s parents were not U.S. citizens when he was born. Death records from Indiana records confirm that Salvador Curiel died a Mexican citizen in 1964… not as the New York Times’s Alan Rappeport reported in an anti-Donald Trump article. But Rappeport claimed that the elder Curiel had died a U.S. citizen. He didn’t. Here’s what Rappeport wrote: Judge Curiel, 62, was born in East Chicago, Ind., to parents who had emigrated from Mexico. Raul Curiel said their father, Salvador, arrived in Arizona as a laborer in the...

The State Department is using American taxpayer dollars to finance Palestinian Arabs celebrating violent attacks on Israelis and advocating a boycott of Israel and the division of its capital city. Where’s the outrage? Not in the New York Times, which treats the topic as subject for a light-toned feature article about what it describes as a Palestinian “reality television show.” The show features contestants who “run” for the job of Palestinian president. The Times article reports that “the three finalists all had similar platforms: Boycott Israel. Designate East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine.” Later, the Times reports, almost in...

I understand you may not love (or even like) Mrs. Clinton right now. Perhaps you can’t imagine knocking on doors for her in the cold or donating your hard-earned money to finance her campaign. I’m doing both of those things, but I realize that you may not want to. I felt the same way about Mr. Obama in 2008. In the end I didn’t work hard to get him elected (I really regret that now, by the way), but neither did I do or say anything that would harm his chances. I came to accept that he was, in fact,...